“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” (James 1:2-4)

We are going to start our Monday with a thought question: “Why would God give us free will, if there was never going to be an opportunity to make a choice?” You probably don’t have to ponder this question very long before you come to the natural conclusion of, God wouldn’t. God could have designed us to operate like remote control drones, just moving through life exactly as He commanded. Requiring His input from a divine joystick to execute each motion we undergo. But we know that this was not God’s desire for us. While He created us in His own image, God also made us uniquely with our own qualities and gifts. He then topped off the human recipe with our soul and consciousness, stimulated with the gift of free will. This is the ability to form intelligent thoughts, have our own desires, find and experience relationships, and the list goes on. But it also opens the door to challenges, temptations, making the wrong decisions, and failures. So the fact that we are tempted and tested, is not because God is some terrible creator. It’s because God is the glorious author of life that decided to allow us to think and make decisions for ourselves. The most difficult thing for any parent to do is hand over the keys to the car. Because you are handing complete control over to your child. God has done the ultimate version of this for each one of us. Our free will gives us the opportunity to make our own choices. And we see each choice as a test. And each test of faith as an opportunity to persevere. And the gift of perseverance to become more mature in Christ Jesus, “not lacking anything.”